All Features
Thermal chambers have found a place in the psyche of test, quality, and production engineers—and for good reason. Chambers have been a staple for testing and conditioning materials and electronics for many decades.
First developed as passive conditioning tools, chambers have become standard fare…
Sonal Sinha
In a recent poll, employees (22.9%) were identified as the top source of supply chain fraud risk, followed by vendors (17.4%) and other third parties (20.1%), including subcontractors and their vendors. In calling new attention to the old cliché of “an inside job,” the statistics may prove to be…
Douglas C. Fair
Sponsored Content
Statistical process control (SPC) software has been around for decades, used by manufacturers across industries to help monitor process behavior and control quality on the shop floor. Like any technology, the software has evolved over the years into something much more than a…
Fred Schenkelberg
Why do so many avoid confronting the reality of failure? In plant asset management, we are surrounded by people who steadfastly don’t want to know about nor talk about failures. Yet failure does happen; let’s not ignore this simple fact.
The blame game
Unlike a murder mystery, failure analysis (…
Michelle LaBrosse
In past articles, we’ve written on the value of project management professional (PMP) certification for helping you advance in your career and earn a higher salary. (Yep, it’s still true that project managers who hold the PMP certification earn, on average, 17 percent a year more than project…
Wiley
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- Process Simulation Using WITNESS teaches basic and advanced modeling and simulation techniques to both undergraduate and postgraduate students and serves as a practical guide and manual for professionals learning how to build simulation models using WITNESS, a free-standing…
Randall D’Amico
Sponsored Content
Relationships between an organization and its suppliers have traditionally been characterized by adversarial activities and posturing in which at least one, and often both, parties lose. Rather than working together to find ways to create a win-win outcome, buyers use their…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
How do you help leaders understand they need to delegate? I often hear this question, and it was the focus of a recent letter I received.
“Hello Jesse: What have you found are the most effective ways to engage business owners in the need to delegate? Are there particular pain points that make…
Visual Workplace Inc.
(Visual Workplace: Byron Center, MI) -- Visual Workplace Inc. offers “Visual Management Techniques to Define Organized, Productive, Safe Territories and Work Areas,” a free, downloadable PDF to help employers assess their facilities and create a safe workplace using visual management techniques.…
Arun Hariharan
When I visited one of the world’s most advanced car manufacturing plants at Toyota City, Japan, one of the many things about the manufacturing process that struck me as remarkable was that from start to finish, whether molding steel sheets into body parts or fitting those various parts together,…
Brian Maskell
I work with companies that are serious about being lean organizations. Most of them use lean accounting. It’s not about changing your accounting system. It’s about embracing lean principles and methods. Lean changes the way people look at management accounting. Here are 10 things to think about.…
Kelly Graves
Dave hadn’t been evaluated in 25 years, and neither had the other employees of this multimillion-dollar business. Things had gotten very loose with the company. Production targets weren’t being met, there was poor accountability and responsibility, and employees were arriving late and not calling…
Eckel Industries
(Eckel: Cambridge, MA) -- Bismarck, North Dakota, might not be as famous as Fargo with its namesake movie-turned-TV series, but as the state capital and home to Bobcat Co.’s Acceleration Center, it’s got its own claims to fame. The center is a flagship research, design, and engineering facility.…
NIST
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Intel have reported success in using an X-ray scattering technique to accurately measure features on a silicon chip to within fractions of a nanometer, or about the width of a single silicon atom.
The achievement could…
LNS Research
(LNS: Cambridge, MA) LNS Research, a technology research firm focusing on the industrial space, has released its Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Research Library. Comprising research-based best practices and thought leadership publications, the library’s intent is to continuously educate…
GBMP
(GBMP: Newton MA) -- GBMP, a licensed affiliate of The Shingo Institute, is accepting registrations for eight Shingo Institute workshops. With two dates to attend each of the four workshops, GBMP is proud to be able to help hundreds of lean practitioners gain access to all of the important…
Tim Lozier
We recently passed a milestone moment in the hearts and minds of fantasy fan boys like myself. October 21, 2015, marked the day that Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown traveled back to the future in the highly successful sequel, Back to the Future II.
When we took our first glimpse into the future…
John Keyser
“Allow the way to your great work to be guided by your service to others.” —Mollie Marti
W hat is our purpose in life? That is a question that could be discussed for hours and is worthy of our attention. I pose it because I believe how we lead our personal lives has a bearing on who we are in our…
Donald J. Wheeler, Henry R. Neave
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. During the past three months we have looked at three families of probability models and found that they share some remarkable properties. These properties provide a theoretical explanation of how and why process…
Has your organization secured all its electronic healthcare records (EHR)? If not, don’t wait to put the proper policies and procedures in place. If you’ve already secured your EHR, then make sure that you’re ready for an audit by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
I recently wrote that the OCR…
AssurX
(AssurX: Morgan Hill, CA) -- AssurX, Inc., a leading enterprise quality management, risk, and regulatory compliance solution provider, has released the latest update to its AssurX audit management software.
Key benefits to the organization The AssurX software update keeps all stages of the audit…
William Tandler
Editor's note: The original version of this “classic” article by William Tandler first appeared in Quality Digest media in June 2008 and was based on the ASME Y14.5 1994 standard. Updated here to address the ASME Y14.5 2009 standard, it is an alphabetically organized primer of the terms that…
Mary McAtee
Unless you’ve been climbing Mount Everest or spending time in an isolation tank, you have been painfully and repeatedly made aware of the current issues at Volkswagen. It’s early in the feeding frenzy, but as we step through the debris and past the first of what will likely become a steady stream…
Bill Kalmar
My wife Mary has an obsession—she always checks the expiration and freshness dates on food products that we purchase. Mary also marks purchase dates on products such as ketchup, mustard, and salad dressings when she places these items in our refrigerator. I think she has an expiration date on me…
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee, WI) -- Within the next five years, customer experience will overtake product features and safety as the primary driver of customer loyalty, according to Curt Hill, vice president of customer and partner assurance for Cisco Systems Inc., who is speaking at the ASQ International…
